A commonly used pegboard is one made of fiberboard which has small round holes for receiving various wire hanger configurations. Because the fiberboard is a relatively soft material, particularly when damp, the small round holes can become damaged or gored out. Alternatively, they can become filled in, as when clogged with paint. When several boards are joined to form an extended layout, the holes frequently loose register at seams. The appearance of the fiberboard pegboard, generally speaking, suffers from a lack of pleasing uniformity. Furthermore, a backing structure is required, such as fir strips on a wall, both to stiffen the board and to provide space behind for insertion of the wire hangers.
The wire hangers must have a lower appendage to provide a brace, or a buttressing support. When the hanger is hooked into its selected hole(s) and rotated to engage therein, the appendage is caused to rest against the pegboard to form a bracket. It can support the weight of an article hanging vertically, but a force from any other direction would tend to disengage it. Consequently, the pegboard must be used in a wall mount, or otherwise be supported vertically on a base. It cannot serve to fixture a layout of articles in a horizontal attitude, for example. The dangling appendage, furthermore, makes close spacing difficult for small articles or dense layouts.
The prior art addresses some of these disadvantages with an improved hanger, or peg. U.S. Pat. No. 4,805,784 to Solheim, for example, discloses a mounting device for a slat wall. A slat wall has rows of channels, rather than holes, which gives a more regular appearance and some flexibility with location in the channel direction. The channels, in this version of a slat wall, have a T-shaped cross section. The device has a transverse crossbar at the end of the peg which can be aligned with the throat of the channel and then rotated by a twisting motion to a position of engagement. The bilateral extension of the “T” resists forces bearing on the peg in the two directions parallel to the crossbar, but is relatively ineffective for directions approaching the perpendicular. To support a weight, the slat wall must be vertical, the channels must be horizontal, and the blind rotation must approximate a quarter turn.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,255,987 to Gatch uses a similar technique with a crossbar. The crossbar, in this instance, flexes to provide a compression hold on the interfacing surface. Similar to Solheim, the fixture generates support in only two primary directions and lacks a means for registering an optimal rotation angle for the crossbar. The board has an array of slots instead of channels or small round holes. This layout affords more flexibility with inter-peg spacing than either with the proscribed channels or the cumbersome hangers. Unlike the previous reference, the board can be of uniform thickness; but it, nonetheless, requires standoff from a support surface to allow for insertion of the peg.
WIPO Publication WO 2004/026084 to McCormack discloses a ball and socket interface, wherein the peg terminates in a ball and the board is comprised of an array of sockets. The peg, however, is connected by a hook at the end of the ball which is inserted into a hole at the apex of the socket. Similar to the hanger scenario, the connection provides little support in any direction from which it might be unhinged, irrespective of the omni-directional geometry. Like other prior art, the board must be used in a vertical attitude, and space must be provided behind it for insertion of the peg.
The prior art is silent with respect to a capability for firmly gripping an article in any posture of a display board and in any orientation of the article to a peg, and wherein additional capabilities, such as close spacing for articles and flush-mounting of the board to a surface, are included.